Trying to Force the Government's Hand

A number of counties in the U.S. are facing the loss of a major chunk of federal funding.  This funding, via the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self Determination Act of 2000, replaces the loss of timber receipts driven by the sharp decline in the logging of national forest lands.  The reason for providing such funding is that it's difficult for counties to economically adjust when they lose jobs and can't assess property taxes on federal lands.  The majority of the land here in JoCo and in several other Oregon counties belongs to the feds.

The money is often known as safety net funding because it was supposed to be temporary while pursuing a long-term solution to the management of our forests.  We obviously remain far from such a solution, but the payments run out after FY06...and their continuance isn't looking real good.  Some counties like JoCo have not planned or prepared well for that rainy day.

FYI, you can look up the "payments to states" by county here.  All 32 Oregon counties getting such payments chose to base them on the average of the highest three years of timber receipts they received between 1986 and 1999.  But, the amounts shown aren't all that some counties in Oregon receive through this act. 

These counties have acreage that was part of the Oregon and California Railroad land grant of 1866.  Southern Pacific Railroad was supposed to sell the land to fund its construction of a major north-south railroad (more detailed explanation here).  It built the railroad, but violated a number of provisions for the land disposition in an attempt to keep a lot of it.  Thus, the feds finally reclaimed the lands in 1916...and kept the Oregon land (the story was different in NoCal).  Most of the land now belongs to the BLM...listing of the acreage per county in Oregon here.  The counties get 50 percent of the timber receipts from those lands...and those receipts are pretty small nowadays. 

The following article (dead tree only) from Wednesday's Grants Pass Daily Courier, entitled "Activist Raising Funds to Sue Feds," discusses an interesting idea for forcing the feds to continue the safety net payments.  I've added a couple updates from today's paper. 

Josephine County officials and legislators have spent the last few years wringing their hands over the potential loss of $15 million in annual federal funding.  Jim Frick got tired of hearing about it, so he decided to do something about it.

Frick has been raising money to finance a lawsuit against the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service for the return of the county's O&C lands.  No lawsuit has been filed yet.

Frick will host a free forum at noon Thursday at the Anne Baker Auditorium to discuss the issue and the potential suit.

In his opinion, the federal government has mismanaged the properties and not kept its promise to log the former Oregon and California railroad lands at a "sustainable rate."

Over 150 people showed up for the forum.  Frick, a real estate agent from Cave Junction, is concerned that the current approach of lobbying various congressmen and senators to get the safety net continued is too passive.  Many are worried that with Iraq, Katrina, etc., the safety net funding could be a victim of fiscal belt-tightening. 

Frick is working with the Southern Oregon Resource Alliance (a local non-profit) to raise the $50,000 necessary to retain a Portland attorney (need big-city clout, I guess)...he had $11,000 before today's forum.

"If they are not going to give us receipts from the trees, then give the taxes or give us back our land," he added.  "We need to quit band-aiding things together."

...

"They haven't cut the timber," he said.  "In lieu of timber, we are supposed to receive taxes.  There is a balance between environmental concerns and logging."

"We are not getting nearly what we should be if that area was being taxed.  How fair is that?  The government is letting us down," Frick added.

The O&C land that can be harvested (some of it is subject to various protections) is not being logged at anywhere near even the lowest estimates of a sustainable rate.  Environmental groups are not interested in seeing continued logging.  But, they have different approaches to dealing with the needs of the people living in counties with O&C lands.

In the words of the Klamath Siskiyou Wildlands Center, "Protect the best, restore the rest."  They accuse the logging industry of using of a "sue and settle" tactic to gain sweet settlement deals from the government...like the designation of logging as the dominant use of O&C lands.  Environmentalists who accuse others of using lawsuits as weapons have a problem with calling the kettle black.  KS Wild suggests that plantation thinning can support the timber parts of the economies in Southern Oregon.  Nice theory, if they'd ever agree to managing some of our public forests as plantations.

The Wilderness Society is more interested in finding solutions than offering permanent opposition.  Basically, they support ending things like timber receipts while increasing the funding of various types of payments in lieu of taxes (which is basically what the safety net is).  That way, counties gain a replacement for the loss of potential property taxes while losing a key motivation for supporting the harvesting of their public lands.  That's an interesting idea.  But, it rubs some conservatives wrong because it increases our society's dependency upon government.  And, preserving land doesn't create many jobs.

Not everyone agrees with Frick's approach.  Some feel the best course of action is to continuing working with Congress to get the safety net funding renewed.

"We have a full strategy in place," said Josephine County Commissioner Jim Riddle.  "Legislators, lobbyists and county officials have been working to get the safety net renewed since it was signed in 2000.  They have been meeting daily and weekly with legislators."

Leading the efforts is the Association of Oregon Counties, said Riddle, who is a member of that group's board.

"We appreciate Frick's efforts.  Maybe we can use his idea if all else fails," said Riddle, who added the lawsuit doesn't have official support from the commissioners.  "We don't want to jeopardize our current efforts to get the safety net renewed.  His efforts are valid and valiant.  But we are worried they will get in the way of the work we are doing right now."

Commissioner Jim Raffenberg believes that the safety net isn't a permanent solution.  He's not ready to talk options regarding what to do should the safety net funding end.  But, he thinks that Frick's lawsuit is "definitely a viable option."

Commissioner Dwight Ellis thinks that if 600 million board feet of lumber was harvested from the O&C lands each year, JoCo could do away with property taxes.  I wonder if he's including school funding...more than two-thirds of my property taxes go to various local schools.  By the way, government projections are that 1 billion board feet per year could be sustainably harvested from the county's O&C lands.

Jackson County Commissioner Dave Gilmour agreed with Riddle.

"We don't want to cloud the issue and force senators and congressmen to go against us by filing a lawsuit against the government at this time," he said.

Lane County Commissioner Anna Morrison said she personally agrees with Frick's idea.  The federal government has a responsibility under the contractual agreement to manage the resources for production.

"I feel they haven't done an adequate job so far," she said.

Here in JoCo, the safety net funding goes into the general fund.  If it disappears, so will a significant chunk of our police force, seemingly always the first in line to be cut.  To replace that money and maintain services (at least until the next PERS increase), the threat is that county property taxes would rise from $0.58 per $1,000 of assessed value to about $3.50.  That wouldn't be fun, and it would put even more pressure on our very well-paid county employees to compromise on their pay.  Instead, they're considering striking.  More on that in the very-near future.

It's only a matter of months until we know whether we'll have O&C funding after FY06 or not.  So, how long is Frick supposed to wait to file such a lawsuit? 

Of course, it would be nice if the state government would commit to picking up this legal ball and running with it.  But, that strategy would take a strong leader. 

Comments

[Mike]

RP -- Excellent, excellent, excellent post.

The railroad robber barons stole our land 100+ years ago. and we haven't got it back, yet. The feds are just another, bigger robber.

The feds don't manage land, they incinerate it.

No thank you to the welfare payments. I'd rather have the land.

btw, the rural counties getting the welfare $'s don't get to keep them. The payoffs get "shared" with urban counties like Multco, that have no fed estate. What $'s the rural counties finally receive is already earmarked for programs like funding advocacy groups calling for catastrophic immolation of federal and private land, a pathetic, ironic, vicious circle.

[John in Medford]

Very informative, thoughtful and insightful. Thanks for laying this out for us.

What a huge and complex issue. You have brought it down to a few useful perspectives.

[John Bowler]

I suggest you guys go out and buy a calculator:

O&C land area (http://www.blm.gov/natacq/pls97/1-5-97.pdf): 368,866 acres.

Measure 5 constitutional cap on the tax JoCo can raise: 58.62c/000 (from my property tax return).

Timber land property valuation (see http://www.oregon.gov/DOR/TIMBER/forest_values.shtml) - all JoCo timber land is assessed as property class FG (personal conversation with the assessor): $54.10/acre

There is no severance tax - i.e. the recent tax law change removed the severance tax and replaced it by the equivalent property tax.

Therefore the tax money JoCo would get by having all the O&C land taxed as private land is:

368,866 x 54.10 x 0.5862/1000 =
$11,698

You can double check this by pulling any JoCo property tax record for FC (Forestry Commercial) tax code 05. JoCo receives 3c/acre for such property. Even if the whole of Josephine County was taxed as FC it would still only raise less than $34,000/year for the county government!

Gee, that's a real help to fill a $14,042,595 shortfall (http://www.co.josephine.or.us/Files/05-06%20Budget%20Book.pdf page 30), almost as much help as firing the three commissioners ($270,000).

Who could possible benefit from transferring the ownership of public lands in this way? The zoning can't be changed - it's commercial forestry land. Who benefits from transfers of ownership of real property? Realtors maybe? Whose idea is this, and what does he do for a living?